Close Your Eyes
by blinkblink
Summary: They tell him Snake is dead. He thinks immediately: No, he's not. But he can't say that. Slash, SnakexOtacon. AU due to MGS4, no spoilers
1. Sono yume no naka de, oyasumi

_Sono__ yume no naka de, oyasumi / From within those dreams, goodnight_

For 37 years, Hal Emmerich dreams in black and white. Until one night, he doesn't. He isn't sure why this changes. It might be completely random. It might be a result of the heavy sedative Naomi pumps into his bloodstream. But probably, he later thinks, it is because he has just been told that Snake is dead.

It is Mei Ling who tells him, standing at the head of the little group of renegade soldiers and scientists – the gang's all here, Meryl and Jack and even Naomi and where they dug her up from God only knows – and he wonders briefly as she steps forwards as spokeswoman if they elected her for the job or drew straws or played jan-ken-pon before his mind tells him he's being ridiculous again. But then she's speaking, lilted tones softer than usual, eyes full of tears, and although she stumbles through some attempts to soften her message it's useless because his ears stamp her words across his sight in thick black ink: _Snake is dead_. And he thinks clearly, immediately: No, he's not. But he can't say that.

Things go downhill at this point, because he tries to sit up and speak at the same time, and Jack steps forward to push him back and the dull pain in his shoulder which he's mostly been ignoring suddenly ignites into red-hot flames, thick claws of pain digging into the surrounding muscles and he gasps, and then Naomi is stepping forward and there's the glint of metal and a pinch-prick and the world spins and darkens abruptly.

And he dreams. The colours are sharp and raw, bright primaries and secondaries with no depth of hue or blending. Red is fire-engine red, yellow the bright feathers of a canary, blue the sharp blue of a prairie sky on a hot summer's day. He dreams of fire and water, tongues of blinding red and orange flame snapping at each other, a great cool sea of green-blue water crested by white foam. He dreams of himself, wrapped in green and blue and white like the sea, whispering to an empty room. He dreams of Snake, standing in a field of red and orange flames, shouts drowned out by the crackling of the fire.

--

Hal wakes up sweating, head full of the smell of smoke. To his left, someone turns a page of paper, and he cringes at the dry crackling sound. He turns in the bed, body heavy and ungainly, shoulder still aching, stomach unsettled, skin itching vaguely.

Rose is sitting in a chair beside him, looking through a magazine, just slightly out of focus; his glasses are gone. She closes it when she sees him move, turns to him with an expression of sympathetic attention. Hal thinks: They left me with her? But he can't say that. He doesn't actually _dislike_ Rose. Hal dislikes very few people, and a large percentage of those he does either work for Microsoft or have the initials R.O.

While he doesn't dislike Rose, he doesn't really want to see her here right now, because she has very little restraint when it comes to personal questions and he doesn't want to deal with that right now.

"How are you feeling?" she asks, in the same paper-soft voice as Mei Ling.

"Fine," he says, with a thick tongue, and so adds on, "A bit muggy." He isn't sure why that word comes to mind, but it's apt. He feels heavy, tired and hot, exactly like a thick summer afternoon when the air is so filled with ambient heat that it saps the energy directly out of you, cicada buzzing wrapped around you like a felt blanket.

"That will be the sedative," she says briskly. "Naomi says it will wear off in a few hours. You'll be on the pain killers for a few days, though."

The sedative suggests something to his mind, but already another thought is being tugged at, and as he shifts, his aching shoulder brings it to the fore. He glances down and notices for the first time he's wearing a light cotton shift, the kind found in hospitals. "What happened?" he asks. And watches as Rose's face changes like rippling water, from cool control, to shock, to fear, to uncertainty, and back to a similar but slightly less assured control in only a second.

"You were in a fire. On a mission. The building almost collapsed on you. A burning spar must have caught you in the shoulder." She speaks in calm, collected sentences, which allow no room for uncertain things like emotion.

Hal knows where the flames in his dream came from now. He remembers them, remembers the hot air on his face, at his back, even his sweat warm with the raw heat. Remembers Snake, cold and precise and graceful as a river, flowing through fire, guiding him, the smooth suit cool under his fingers, a dash of blue in the bright inferno.

"And Snake?" he asks. Mei Ling's words echo in his head like bees buzzing in can. _Snake is dead_.

"He didn't make it," Rose says slowly, as if choosing her words carefully, which is ludicrous because they're so clichéd that he could have predicted them while unconscious.

Hal wants to laugh. He wants to ask her, ask them, how they can possibly believe that he, Hal Emmerich, survived when Snake did not. But he can't. So, instead, he asks "How do you know?" All he remembers is flames, and smoke, falling from a window onto grass, hands and knees aching, back burning, and then oily nothingness. He didn't jump from the window, he knows that much. He must have been pushed. Snake must have been behind him. He can almost feel the soldier's hands, one on his arm, the other around his waist, strong fingers guiding him, a warm presence at his back. And then he starts, swallowing thickly, because _Snake is dead_.

"Jack and Meryl saw it," Rose says, and he's almost forgotten what he asked. "Saw him, behind you, before everything collapsed. I'm sorry, Hal."

"I-" There's fear in him, now, seeping in through his skin like water through cracks, cold and insidious, pooling in his gut, thick and viscous. He swallows again, and tastes bile. He feels flushed, hot, world swaying slightly, and he raises a hand to his forehead.

"Are you all right?" Rose sounds far away. His forehead is warm, hot, shaking, no that's his hand, trembling. His skin feels like it's crawling. _Everything is all right, except that it's not, because _Snake is dead. He turns onto his side, away from Rose, away from the burning in his shoulder, just _away_. His stomach clenches, hard, tight, as though grabbed by a foreign, icy hand. He gags, legs jerking up automatically, drawing himself up into a ball, eyes pressed shut. Rose is still talking, chattering away, but he can't make out what she's saying because there's an ocean roaring in his head, a sea of flames, burning his shoulder, burning his throat, burning his mind, and Snake is burning with him.

A hand on his side tries to turn him over, digging into his stomach. The added pressure sets him to retching, muscles tensing and untensing with painful fervour, side beginning to cramp, shoulder aching. Someone is shouting in his ear, pulling at his good shoulder. He coughs, spitting out a mouthful of bile, nose full of the stink of vomit, head spinning. He looks up to meet Naomi's eyes, the doctor's cold fingers against his throat. He can't separate his pulse from the thrumming in his ears, but he's pretty sure he's panting, which means it's probably pretty fast. "Hal, are you allergic to any medications?" Her voice is icy and cut-glass, slicing through the smoky haze in his mind.

He coughs again, and an earlier thought reshuffles itself to the top. "Some benzodiazepines, mildly allergic," he recites, the facts beaten into his oldest, iron-wrought memories, along with his name and birth date. He grinds his teeth against instinct to retch again.

"Anything else?"

He shakes his head, teeth sliding slickly against each other, closes his eyes. The dark is cool, and safe. He is safe here. He is safe, and Snake is safe, and they are safe together.

"Snake," he whispers.

--

Hal wakes up in a different room. This one is larger, and has less of a hospital-aura, less white, less disinfectant-smell, and no matching white sheet sets. He doesn't recognise it, though, not the yellow walls, flowery curtains, matching oak furniture or green iris-pattern duvet covering the single bed. The room was, he thinks, decorated by a woman. That much is clear.

Jack is sitting next to the bed, staring over it out the window, his outline just a tiny bit uncertain. Glasses still haven't shown up. Hal watches his eyes shift from the window to himself, china blue just like the plates, face pale to match. He looks tired, which is unusual for the young soldier. "How are you feeling?" he asks. Hal asks it along with him, predicting the words just before they're spoken in the privacy of his mind. And then he drops the light-heartedness, a juggler fumbling his balls, because _Snake is dead_. He tenses slightly, feels a stiffness in his ribs.

"Fine," Hal whispers, and does not elaborate this time. He feels cold, and he's not sure whether he should wish for the heat back, or not.

"Naomi took you off whatever she had you on. Just some light pain meds now. The other stuff should all be out of your system."

"That's good," he says, doesn't try to fit any emotion in. Jack doesn't expect it, anyway.

They sit there in silence for a while, Hal not used to sympathy, Jack not used to giving it. Eventually, he turns to face the soldier and breaks the silence with a soft question. "You saw it?"

Jack doesn't answer right away, shifts slightly. "Yes," he says finally. "I saw him push you out the window. Just in time. It was… unbelievable, the entire roof above him just fell, right then. He never had a chance. It's a miracle you made it out."

Hal thinks: It wasn't a miracle; he wouldn't let anything happen to me. But he can't say that. He says nothing. Jack turns to look out the window again.

"Do you have my glasses?" Hal asks, after a few minutes, because the silence is rattling in his mind like a die in a cup, driving him mad.

"What? Uh, yes. Not here. They're… Mei Ling has them, I think. I'll tell her to leave them, the next time she stops by."

Because they're worried about leaving him alone. He sighs and closes his eyes. He hears Jack shift, lightly. "Hal?"

"Yes?" He doesn't open his eyes.

"About Snake…"

"I'm okay," he says, predicting the question again. What he wants to say is: I'm cold, and lonely, and for fuck's sake, _Snake is dead_, how is that okay? But he can't.

What he wants… what he wants is for Snake to hug him, or press his lips against his throat, or blow a cloud of smoke his face, or, or just touch him, just the warmth of his fingers on the inside of Hal's wrist. To feel his partner next to him, smelling of smoke and pine and _Snake_. But that's not going to happen, and he knows why.

"Snake?" he asks quietly. There is no answer, except Jack's worried glance. Because _Snake. Is. Dead._

--

No one asks him what happened. This is extremely suspicious, especially considering he is living with a group of people who have survived as long as they have by being as nosy as possible. This leads him to believe that they already know what happened, have hacked into security systems or satellites or found some surviving guards to interrogate, although heaven help that guard.

What is also extremely suspicious is that they are all nervous. It's difficult to tell, since they are all guarding their emotions around him, and he never sees any two of them together except when his watchers change shifts. And it's not as if he knows most of them well to begin with, but there is a definite undercurrent of worry and suspicion and nervousness lurking just below the surface, pulling them down. He wants to pay attention to this, because it is important, but he's been taking on water himself, frigid liquid drowning him slowly from the inside out, pouring in without cessation.

He lies in a bed which smells like too much laundry detergent, staring at the uneven surface of the ceiling full of craters and mountains, looking for the rabbit in the moon. Mei Ling has brought his glasses at last, but the world seen through them looks no different than before. There is no Snake. When he first puts them on, he almost cries.

They haven't found Snake's body. He knows, because no one's suggested burying him yet. He asks Naomi during her shift, and she gives him a sympathetic look and tells him they are still searching, in the same cool accented tones she used when refusing Snake the details of FoxDie, or the cure. Of all his acquaintances he trusts her the least to give a true answer, but the most not to lie to protect his feelings. He keeps his eye on her, paying attention with the part of him that calmly catalogues events while the emotional half screams _Holy shit, they just shot Motoko_. Or, in this case, whispers more quietly and much, much more deeply, _Snake is dead_.

By the end of his second day awake, he thinks he's going to go stir crazy, locked in the tiny room, constantly attended, being treated like he's already snapped. Naomi is the only one who gives him completely plain answers, and he can't stand to keep up long conversations with her, not now. The others are walking on eggshells, whispering in the hallways and looking at each other when they think he's not watching. His insistence on keeping the window open, even at night, disturbs them. The only way he managed it was to pull a Shima Yoshitsune, convince them that he's afraid of fire, which worried them considerably. As have his other few odd habits, sleeping with his glasses on, and waking and sleeping with the same one word, _Snake_. But what do they know?

--

His shoulder aches more now; he's stopped taking the pills Naomi has been giving him.  Distrust is beginning to grow in his mind like a weed, spreading thin tendrils through his thoughts. He is no more sure of Rose, once as much of a traitor as the doctor, and he does not sleep when she is in the room, only picks at the food she gives him. He has been thinking more, of the fire, of the mission, of Snake. Always of Snake. They say he is dead. He asks for a pitcher of water by his bedside, and they look at him askance, watching with suspicious eyes. He begins to smell smoke, sometimes, just a tiny trace of the choking scent. It vanishes as soon as he sits up, tired eyes blinking – he hasn't been sleeping well – no trace of it in the room. But he worries now, all the same. When he sleeps, he dreams of flames, bright as a phoenix. Suzaku granted wishes, he remembers, but he is no priestess, and he has lost his guardian. The time passes slowly. The tendrils spread and thicken, branching out through his mind.

Lately, he has begun to have doubts about Jack, has even harboured a few about Mei Ling, his oldest comrade aft – apart fro – not counting Snake. The food seems off, slightly, and he has not been eating well, hardly drinking. There is always the dry taste of ashes underlying his meals. Naomi has been coming more frequently, speaking to him in that quiet, pleasant voice, the sweet tones of a murderess. He refuses shots, and hides the pills she gives him under the mattress when his attendant isn't watching. He worries when she has him turn over to check his shoulder, tenses against a knife in the back, cool and sharp as her nails.

The fire was set. He knows it, but he can't say that. They have told him it was an accident, overloaded circuit near a dripping socket, but what else would they tell him? He wants to suspect a relative outsider, a new recruit to their network, the new data analyst or the weapons specialist, but they're all too damn suspicious. They watch him with wary eyes, and sometimes when he looks close enough he can see the guilt there. Perhaps, some of them are even in it together, Rose and Jack pouring gasoline as a pair, one lighting the match while the other held the pack, or Naomi and Rose, the two traitors banding together. Maybe it was Mei Ling on her own, trying to remove him from the picture to take his place, and Snake's death – death – death – was an accident. The words echo hollow in his mind, church bells tolling out a passing. Hal lets out a sob, Jack looking up sharply from his book and then away again.

It is Jack this evening, sitting next to him reading an old worn book. He doesn't know which book, doesn't care. Dinner, minestrone, was oddly salty, and he thinks his head is too warm. He doesn't tell Jack, doesn't want Naomi, doesn't want more pills or more shots or more icicle fingers on his back. The window is letting in a cool breeze, and he shivers, pulls the duvet up higher around his shoulders and burrows deeper into his cocoon. Jack looks over again.

"D'you want me to close the window?" he asks in a careful tone, gently and soft as fingers handling delicate cut glass, the tone they've been using around him almost constantly now, not just about the window.

"No," he says sharply, afraid to look at it and take his eye off of Jack, afraid not to in case his point is lost, _afraid_. He thinks: Snake, where are you? And then he laughs, quietly, because _Snake is dead_. The laughs turn to breathless sobs, wracking his body, shoulder burning, head aching, cool tears running down his cheeks cooled further by the breeze. He wipes the tears away with the back of his hand, ignoring Jack's awkward, pity-filled eyes, and drops his hands down to rest on his lap, sniffling slightly.

A pair of warm fingers brush the inside of his left wrist, soft as a butterfly's wing, and his head jerks up. Snake is standing there, right there, next to his bed, watching him with dark eyes. "Snake," he gasps, so much joy pouring out with his breath that it leaves him dizzy. "Thank god. Oh, thank god," he repeats, heart clenching and unclenching painfully, but the pain is good, is sweet, is wonderful compared to the fiery burning fear. Snake smiles slightly, the hint of shadow in his eyes disappearing. "I thought – I was beginning to think-" he doesn't finish; it doesn't matter. And, even had he wanted to, he doesn't get the opportunity, because Jack shifts in his chair and clears his throat slightly.

"Hal?" he says, in the tone of someone who has dropped the glass they were handling, and watched it smash on the ground. Hal turns to look at him. "Who are you talking to?" he asks quietly.

Hal looks back to his side. Snake is still there, standing straight now, arms crossed across his chest, looking faintly pleased with himself.

"Snake," says Hal. Jack follows his line of sight, and then looks back to him.

"Hal," says Jack carefully, picking out each syllable like a note on the piano, "there's nobody there."

Hal ignores him and turns back to Snake. "Are you okay?" he asks, eyes wandering over the soldier's strong build. Snake shrugs and nods. His movements, at least, are smooth enough, almost no hint of no pain, of injury. He smiles, feeling like an idiot for ever having doubted. Snake is amazing, is damn close to perfect, is _Snake_. Of course he didn't die. "I'm glad," he says anyway, sniffles again. Snake rolls his eyes, but his expression is soft. A quiet electronic sound from his right breaks his attention, and he looks around. Jack is calling someone on his cell.

Snake's face, when he looks back, is serious now, and he cocks an eyebrow at Jack. Hal shakes his head gently. "I don't know," he says. "_I don't know_. I've been waiting and waiting, and I-" he shakes his head, more actively this time, as if to chase away his thoughts. Snake places a gentle hand on his left shoulder. "Sorry," he whispers.

Jack has hung up, and says, "Hal," in a soft voice which nevertheless commands attention. Hal turns to face him, and sees emptiness there, a face with every emotion under lock and key. "Naomi's coming over."

Hal nods, complacent. Snake is here, and he is safe.

--

Time, which has until then passed so slowly, seems to speed into fast forward. Naomi is brought in, and there is a short examination ending in pills and commands for more rest and nutrition. There is a surfeit of whispered conversations in the hallways. Snake tells him he does not know who it is, has no firm suspicions, does not distrust any over the others. He tells Hal to take the pills, and to sleep. He will watch over him. For the first time in four days, Hal sleeps for a full night. He dreams of the ocean, a soft green-blue, cool water lapping at his feet.

Snake is there when he wakes up, a watchful presence in the corner. He leaves once Hal has woken, though, presumably to hunt out clues. Hal doesn't care; _Snake is dead_, but he's alive, and he won't let anything happen to his partner. He tells Naomi, when she comes to ask if he's seen Snake since he woke up, that he has, but the soldier left. She leaves the room and speaks with Mei Ling outside, shaking her head slightly. Hal smiles.

The situation was impossible, intolerable before, a searing desert of dry flames. But now the world is cool and green, and the taste of ashes has been drowned out. The clawing pain in his back has been reduced to an itch. Now, he can think again. Now he can watch, now he can find their little Dilandau. And so he does.

But he sees nothing he did not before, albeit through a clean lens now. Mei Ling is awash with pity and compassion and worry, and her face is still tender with her own loss. Meryl's pity is gruffer and iron-edged, and under her cold mask he can see that she is grieving alone, and fighting it. Raiden, under the film of compassion and concern, is furious and Hal is not sure who that anger is directed towards, but it only shows in the occasional sharp movement or flash of his eyes. Rose is a milder country, full of vague sorrow and sympathy and a stronger overall discomfort. Naomi is brisk and concerned and her dark eyes are full of loss and sadness as always, but what it is she's mourning he's not sure and never has been. Left to talk to them one by one, alone, he will never learn anything. Will never find their firebug. He needs to escape his confinement.

"I need to get out of this bed," is how he puts it to Naomi, who has been rescheduled to watch over him more often. "I'm done lying around. I need to get out, maybe help you guys on whatever you're working on." He doesn't know what this might be, but suspects the fire. The definitely and completely an accident fire.

"I'm not sure that's a very good idea right now, Hal. You need more rest-"

"I've been lying in a bed for the past four days!"

"But sleeping and eating badly."

"Well, I'm better now."

"Hal – quite frankly there is some concern as to your mental state, and until we can be sure you're quite stable-"

"You think I'm going crazy."

Naomi contrives to look vaguely understanding and dismissive. "No, of course not. Lapses of that kind, especially after a very traumatic event, are not uncommon. Coupled with your injuries, the painkillers and your current overall physical state, it's very natural."

Hal smiles, bright as a blade. "You think it was a hallucination."

"Yes, of a kind."

He shrugs slightly. It's probably best, for now, to let them think what they wanted. Let them believe he was hallucinating. Of course, when Snake comes back later, things might get difficult. But that's a bridge he'll be forced to cross, since he has already set a torch to the ones behind him. "If you say so. But if it was caused by all those things, I've already taken care of most of them. And really, keeping me in this room will just make me more anxious."

Naomi purses her lips.

"Look, I really appreciate all you guys have done, taking care of me and everything, but when it comes down to it I'm not your responsibility." He is Snake's, as Snake is his. "Let me out of here, please. I promise I won't go far, if that helps."

Naomi watches him, dark eyes sharp and considering. Eventually, they lighten. "I will have to speak with Raiden about it. It is his facility, after all. But if he agrees… provided that you continue to receive medical treatment and remain with someone else at all times until I have cleared you, you may take on some light activities."

"Thanks. Will you speak to him now?" He tries to keep the eagerness out of his voice, but it seems almost to him to be humming with it.

"At the end of my shift. I believe the others are busy."

Busy doing what? he wonders.

--

They let him out. It's more than an hour into Mei Ling's shift when Naomi returns with Jack's permission; he wonders how much of that hour was spent arguing over him. Jack may have a legitimate concern, may simply not want anything untoward to happen in his facility. Hal hopes that's all it is, hopes that the younger man isn't going to be irritating and try to take responsibility for him, or worse to feel himself Snake's successor and appoint himself as some sort of guardian figure. No one would replace Auron with Tidus.

The atmosphere in Jack's base is one of anxious awkwardness, like a bumblebee in a glass jar. Jack's staff is unused to being in the company of such godly figures as the original Shadow Moses team. All together an amazing round of Where Are They Now, they've each ascended to the top of their respective fields; soldier, geneticist, data analyst, hacker/engineer. A visit from any one of them would be awe-inspiring. Having them all gathered together at once must be equivalent to a surprise visit from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Jack's men and women are disciplined enough not to react to his presence when he is released among them, a tagged bird back to the wild, but he notices stiff spines and rigid stares everywhere he goes.

The building is a large one, and familiar faces are few and far between, scattered throughout its many rooms. Mei Ling takes him to the lab she has been working in, a large room on the second floor crammed tight with electronics. Tables have been installed against all four walls, and another splits the room in half. Every inch of counter space is covered with a sprawling technological jungle, hidden away under thick rivers of wires and groves of transformers and power bars. Computer screens gleam darkly among nests of print-outs and rustling sheaves of bulletins. There is only room for two, and that has clearly been hard fought-for, cables and wires and computer towers whacked sternly back to make space for a small plastic chair on each side of the dividing table. Mei Ling indicates the seat on the right, and he struggles over to it. She seats herself in the other chair, and he sees that a gap has been forged between them so that they can see one another.

"Nice set up," he says, clicking the mouse at his right and bringing the screen in front of him immediately to life, idly noting the boot times for programs as he flipped through them.

"It's not home, but Jack's people have been very helpful. Mark – Jack's analyst, has been showing me some new interfacing software. It's very good."

"Is that what you've been doing around here?" He keeps his tone light and carefree, still apparently focused on the computer.

"Yes." There was an instant of hesitation. "Some of it," she adds more truthfully. Hal closes the satellite signal locating program he had opened, and looks up.

"Why are you all hanging around here, Mei Ling? It's dangerous and unnecessary. We never get together like this."

Mei Ling freezes, caught unawares. She catches hold of her surprise quickly, though, and muzzles it. "Under the circumstances…"

"The circumstances-" Snake "brought you all together, but what's keeping you here? It's not me. That would never keep Meryl or Rose here, and not even Naomi once Jack found a doctor."

 "Hal, everyone's been worried about you, and we're all still shaken up about – Snake…" Her voice drops to a whisper, so that she almost has to choke his name out.

"I know that. I know you're worried, and I appreciate it, but lying to me isn't going to help. Please. Why are you here? Why are you all watching each other? What do you suspect?" Who do you suspect?

She is watching him with fear in her shadowed eyes now, they're shining in the room's poor light, a lake's dark water under a cold moon. Her fingers click against the table once in a nervous gesture, although she stiffens them immediately.

"Mei Ling, please. You've known me for years. I'm alright now, and you're going to need my help to find – whatever it is you're looking for." Whoever it is. To smoke him out with his own fire. Or her. He can't help the glance at Mei Ling's hands again, her delicate fingers, the nails so perfectly manicured. There is no weapon nearby. He exhales, guilt smothering fear in its crib.

She is still hesitating. "Hal, I want to, but I'm not sure… maybe you should wait another day or two. You weren't well last night." Or this morning. He can see it in her eyes, see the thoughts there mixing with the fear and uncertainty. He's not sure whether she's afraid for him, or _of_ him. She might have been a reflection of his own thoughts. But he can't say that.

"Okay," he says, slowly, consideringly. He's considering it, of course he is. She's right, he's not ready for the strain yet, he needs to rest. He projects those thoughts, pours out acceptance as best he can, and he can see her tasting the waters first, and then drinking it in. Of all of them, he knows her the best, has worked with her almost more than all the others combined. He suspects her least, and feels for her most; he has always looked kindly on her, watched her work and her life like a – a brother. He does not actually think this, does not use the word even in his mind, will never think of himself that way again and tempt the curses that wait in his shadow, but it describes his feelings well enough. He doesn't want it to be her, he doesn't think it is. But for all Snake's always told him he's too innocent and trusting, he knows the taste of betrayal. He doesn't want to believe it, but he could, if it came to it.

Mei Ling smiles, relieved, and shakes raven-dark hair out of her eyes. "If you want," she tells him in a more familiar voice, tones lighter than any he's heard in the past four dark days, "you could try to repair Mark's laptop." She indicates a dark box perched on the top of a smooth-sided alabaster-coloured printer. He takes it down, flipping it open thoughtlessly. "Some water got spilled on it last week, and it hasn't been working since."

Hal makes an affirmative sound, and looks around for a screwdriver.

--

An hour later he's taken the computer to pieces, has ploughed out some space for himself on the floor and laid out the relevant parts there, the casing ready at hand for him to pass static to. He has, in fact, done a significant part of the reconstruction work, when someone knocks at the door. Mei Ling stands to answer it, chair scraping quietly against the floor and into a mouldering travel case.

Hal doesn't recognize the man at the door, doubtless some red shirt of Jack's. He's eyeing Hal nervously, awe preventing him from giving anything approaching an order to the engineer. The idea of being the worshipped rather than the worshipper is new to Hal, and he's not sure he likes it. Eventually, the man manages to spit out his purpose; to speak to Mei Ling privately. Hal shrugs, and Mei Ling rises to leave, probably to hold the conversation in the hall where she can still keep an eye on him.

As she's half-way out of her chair, a tall figure glides up behind the man, blue suit bright in the gray corridor. Snake, beckoning him with sharp eyes. He stands so fast he almost knocks a keyboard off of its shelf, drawing attention to himself.

"I have to go – to the bathroom," he stammers. "Just stay here. I'll be back in a minute; it's just down the hall, right?" He has a vague memory of having passed one. Mei Ling is frowning, but he's already half way to the door, Jack's minion scampering to get out of his way. Mei Ling calls him, but he waves a confident hand and slips around the corner before she can escape the electronic jungle.

He follows Snake down the hall, soldier leading the way to the bathroom on silent feet without looking back.

The bathroom is a copy of all office facilities, small, neither pristine nor filthy, and tiled in a washed-out green. It is also, more importantly, empty, door swinging shut with a quiet thump.

"I haven't found anything," he says immediately, as Snake leans back against the far wall, bright eyes watching the door. "They only just let me out. They're all too worried about me to tell me what they're doing; what they suspect. They think I'm going crazy." He smiles gently, self-consciously. "I didn't exactly handle things well while you were gone," he admits.

Snake shrugs away his words, recognizing them for the apology they are, with a kind of closed sympathy. He steps forward soundlessly and lays a hand on Hal's bad shoulder, turns him slightly and pulls at the collar of his shirt. His fingers move gentle and cool as water over the bandage, inspecting the injury's care carefully. "It's fine," Hal says, but doesn't shrug away. After a moment the hands still to rest light as mist over Hal's shoulders, and a warm weight presses against the back of his skull. Snake's breath ghosts over his spine, setting his hairs on edge.

"Have you found anything?"

The soldier shakes his head, Hal moving with the motion like a boat on the ocean. "Judging by Mei Ling, they'll probably break it to me in a day or two. I suppose they don't want me haring off after revenge. Until then, I'll just keep-"

Snake's presence at his back disappears abruptly, and he stops immediately. Something thumps at the bathroom door, and then it swings to open. He steps back immediately, turns to see Snake move to stand beside him, eyes narrow and watchful.

It's Jack, looking hurried, with the same undercurrent of anger, and a hint of something else. He steps into the room abruptly, leaving the door to swing shut behind him.

"Hal! You promised to stay with someone," he begins; his tone is more relief than anger. As if he expected the engineer to be in here hanging himself by his shoe strings. Hal glances at Snake, who is following Jack's moves with his eyes, and does not reply. Jack sighs. "I know it's inconvenient, but try, okay?"

Hal smiles crookedly, tries to look apologetic, and nods. "Okay."

It seems to be good enough. Jack relaxes, posture loosening. "Well," he says, almost lightly, "we might as well have lunch, since we've taken a break anyway."

Hal waits for Snake's nod before accepting, and follows Jack out with a last glance at Snake. The soldier is looking at the mirror, but as Hal turns his head he disappears. Hal's lips twist upwards again, in what he can't help but think of as a shinigami smile.  

TBC: Hopefully by the end of July?


	2. Nakanaide yasashiisa to yosawa wa chigau

Uh, yeah. Just a bit late. Sorry. EDIT: 's having problems with line breaks again apparently... If they don't show up, try Rakuen (link from profile).

_Nakanaide, yasashiisa to yowasa wa chigau yo ne / Don't cry; kindness and weakness are not the same thing._

Jack, Hal thinks, has had a harder time than the others. Not only does he have a child to take care of now, but his wife is a primary suspect. He wonders how deep Jack's trust runs, how long a leash he trusts the former Patriot agent on. How soundly he sleeps at night lying next to her. It may be because of this that Jack is a seething pot of anger under his cold exterior. It may be because so many legends are airing their dirty laundry in his facility, and at the end of the day one of them will be torn down from his or her pedestal and burned at his front door. It may be due to genuine affection for Snake, the only guiding figure Raiden ever had who gave anything like a damn for him. Hal hopes it's not due to him, not disappointment and shame and disgust at his weakness, but he thinks it might be. Jack was wrapped in the safety blanket of idealism somewhere along the crooked road of his life, and he hasn't quite let go of the threadbare edges yet. An outpouring of grief he could deal with, and probably even a morbid dive into alcoholism, but nervous breakdowns are distasteful, embarrassing things. Hal, on the other hand, burned the torch of idealism quick as phosphorous, and it was dark and dead before he finished his second decade. Breakdowns may be embarrassing and distasteful, but he knows worse things.

Whatever it is that's rubbing busily under Jack's skin, the soldier's steering well away from it while consuming a damp ham and cheese sandwich. "...Mei Ling said you were working on some laptop?"

Hal bobs assent, considering his own sandwich with an unenthusiastic eye. "Yeah. One of your data analysts – Mike? Mark?"

"Mark."

"Right, Mark, spilled a glass of water in it. That's generally pretty fatal. It's not going to be a triumph." Nor a huge success.

"Well, I'm sure anything's better than nothing. We back up everything once a week, important files more often, but there's probably some stuff on there that he'd miss."

"I may be able to salvage some data, but it's gonna be a junker. It'll never run properly again." He watches Jack curiously, watches for a flinch, but of course there isn't one. The soldier's been stared at by worse than a ragged engineer making oblique references in his own office. The megane character is very rarely intimidating. "And you? What've you all been doing?" Hal keeps the tone light, but there's no disguising the suspicion beneath it. Jack shrugs, lithe and unconcerned.

"Gathering intel, making a general reconnaissance. You know how rare it is for us to get together like this."

"Trading stories, tying up loose ends?"

"That kind of thing, yeah." It's a straight-out unapologetic lie, and Hal's getting tired of running head-on into cement walls.

"Bullshit, Jack. You want me to believe you're all here just to hang around swapping gossip and exchanging pictures like a high school reunion? Yeah, and I bet Meryl and Mei Ling are sharing a room and staying up 'til three doing their nails and chatting about their ex's. Hell, the last time all of us were together… I can't even remember. Last time we even came close was the underground rumours of North Korea getting their hands on a Metal Gear and aiming it straight at Washington. What's really going on?" Pretence of lunch fallen by the wayside, Hal watches the soldier's poker face drop into place like a weighted curtain while he tailor-fits a new lie to the situation. To his credit, it only takes a few seconds.

"Frankly, with Snake gone, there's a power vacuum, okay? Yeah, my and Meryl and Mei Ling's ops overlap to a certain extent, we all did with Philanthropy as well, you know that. But now there's a big hole in the middle and no one's sure who's going to fill it. That kind of thing takes time to work out, or you end up running over peoples' toes with an M1 tank." Jack delivers like a pro; he is a pro by now, Hal supposes. The duckling has spread its wings and become a swan, with power and sure footing and a damn long wingspan. Whatever other problems he had, Jack has always had a certain talent for believability. For whatever reason, he makes you want to believe him, to look into those azure eyes and let him pull the wool right over your eyes with that tiny crook of the lips. Snake has the rock-solid weight of complete surety behind him; if he says it, it _has_ to be true because he doesn't just believe it, he _knows_ it. Jack, on the other hand, has the daring, attractive quality of the maverick; just the right blend of certainty with a touch of dark humour to raise sympathy. Hal will take no-nonsense surety over dashing probability any day, and has.

"And Naomi and Rose are camping out to show solidarity? Naomi doesn't give a damn for power vacuums; she'd happily create one herself just to see what happened." He brings up short, words spilling out ahead of thoughts, so that his ears have to play them back for his mind before he can write the equation out in thick red marker. He forces himself to continue, catch his balance after the stumble and carry on. If Jack notices the implication he hides it away. "Rose wouldn't spend all her time here either; not with the kid to take care of, not when you can hammer out your end of the bargain perfectly well on your own."

"Why don't you just tell me what you think?" Jack gives an easy gambler's smile: give it your best shot. _Sasuga_, thinks Hal. Just like a soldier, waiting for a weapon to be revealed before choosing his own.

"I think you're here because Snake – died, except that…" Here Hal confuses himself, unsure which role he should be playing, which of his own lies he should believe. And dammit, he's never been adept with conversations, never been one for verbal fencing but surely he could hold his own in one conversation where the object was so clearly laid out in his mind before hand? Trust him to tie himself up with his own rope. _Snake is dead_, except that he isn't, and he still hasn't resolved that paradox in his own mind. Jack pounces on the mistake like a wolf onto a mouse.

"About that-"

"We don't need to talk about it," he can feel the conversation running away from him, hurtling down a hill further and further from the path he needs it to take.

"I think we do. You still believe he's around, don't you? You keep looking at the door like you expect him to walk in any minute."

Hal, who has been watching the door because he was half expecting _someone_, but certainly not Snake, to walk in, says nothing.

"Look, Hal, just because you want to believe-"

Something about this rouses him, Jack's verbal equivalent to poking him with a blunt stick finally setting him off. It's probably Jack's ridiculous idealism. "'Want to believe?' Do I look like Fox Mulder to you?"

"This isn't a joke! You can't just close your eyes and pretend nothing happened."

"I'll try to remember that, _Raiden_," the rejoinder slips out thin and sharp between his teeth, hackles raised perhaps by the hypocracy. Hopefully that. It's been a long time since he last failed to accept responsibility. Even if it still feels like yesterday sometimes. Those wounds scarred over years ago, no longer open to sting at clumsily tossed salt. It's worrying all the same, how quickly he's going to pieces over all of this; he's startling himself with his anger.

Jack's face darkens, and Hal can see the effort it's costing him not to pick a fight.

"I'm sorry," says Hal, because he is, and also because he needs to derail this conversation. "I'm not really at my best right now." It's almost cheating, playing on his weaknesses like this, but there's no way Jack can disregard it. He backs off.

"No; that's alright. Don't worry about it." Jack pulls a winning smile out of nowhere. "C'mon, try the sandwiches. Rose made 'em, they're not half bad, actually."

And like that the conversation's over. He hasn't gotten any farther, although he managed to keep from backsliding. Not very encouraging.

The sandwiches are… well, they're ham and cheese sandwiches. There's no big way to mess them up short of major ingredient substitution. The bread is limp and soggy, having clearly spent at least all morning sitting in a refrigerator. The mayonnaise is thick and slightly lumpy, ham and cheese almost swimming in it. He chokes them down anyway, if only to avoid having Naomi or Rose herself bring him something else.

Afterwards, Jack walks him back to his room. He's oddly exhausted.

--

Hal dreams of a desert. It's not a proper one, though, not the usual endless stretch of golden dunes under a curved aquamarine sky. The sand here is glistening emerald-turquoise, the bodies of a thousand Rays ground to dust, still sparkling as bright as one of the machines fresh-sprung from the ocean. Here and there tall stones stand crooked, uneven sides smoothed by the wind.

And it's cold, the air crisp and smelling of snow. In the distance, dogs are barking, the low gruff voices of huskies running over deep drifts between pines, racing towards a voice shouting in a blizzard.

The flames lick along the stained carpet in an uneven zigzag, ripping towards the window at the end of the hall, towards the shadow standing silhouetted against the red and orange blaze behind him.

Hal wakes, his own voice caught in his ears, good shoulder oddly tensed. He shakes, not of his own will, fingers digging into his flesh and his muggy thoughts connecting as he reaches for his glasses.

Snake is standing next to him, watching the doorway, sneaking suit shining dully in the afternoon sun. "Whu?" Hal asks, head still clearing.

They drugged you, Snake tells him. A light sedative in your lunch, so they could meet all together.

"Why?"

They're not getting anywhere, Snake says. They've got all the video records; there's nothing. They're chasing after empty options to avoid openly chasing each other. And they think you're too unstable to be left alone, or told about it.

"Great. I knew that. But I'm not doing much better. I'm sure Jack thinks I'm crazier now than he did before I talked to him, and I didn't find anything out. I'm really not cut out for this, Snake."

The shoulder shrugs, a river flowing.

"And what have you been doing, any…way…" he trails off as the door to his right opens without a knock, Naomi striding in with neat clicks of her heels, briefcase in hand. Her eyes track immediately to Hal, dark and secret, before scanning the rest of the room.

"Hello, Hal," she says. Hal catches a movement from Snake and turns to watch as the soldier glances sharply at her and then slips away. "…Hal?"

"Huh? Oh, hello. How are you?"

"Fine, thank you. It seems I didn't wake you."

"Nah, just woke up a few minutes ago. Must have been more tired than I thought." He keeps the accusation out of his voice, but he knows it's flickering in his eyes.

"Recovery, both physical and mental, can be very exhausting. You shouldn't strain yourself; you may tire much more easily than you think." She reports it as a medical fact rather than compassionate advice, which is fine with the engineer.

"I suppose," he says, and waits a beat. Then, "So, where was everyone?"

Naomi is too used to the double-agent game to give anything away. The smile which flickers across her face is calming and meaningless. "A short meeting. Reports and fact finding. The usual."

As if there were a usual, for them. As if there were in anything Naomi had ever been involved in.

"Reports on what?" He looks away, glances around the room to avoid giving the appearance of pressing too hard. There's a vase of flowers on a wooden chest of drawers in the corner that wasn't there before. He wonders who brought it. He wonders why.

"Well, you, amongst other things." She keeps the same easy expression, voice straightforward and sincere. There is no trace of mocking there. It's impressive, really. Jack's good at thoughtlessly pissing people off when he gets angry, but Naomi is a master of intentionally rubbing people the wrong way. Of misdirection through anger. He steers clear of the trap this time.

"Just me?"

"And other things," she repeats. "Jack's housekeeping woes. Meryl's greenhorns making a mess of things in her absence. The general reports on potential national or international situations."

"What about Rose?"

"She's been doing some data analysis. It is her job, you know. Apparently she's just turned up some new material from one of her Middle Eastern connections." An answer for everything, perfectly presented.

"I see," says Hal, who can at least see that he's not going to get anything out of the scientist. He lies back in the bed, and Naomi relaxes into the bedside chair and pulls a sheaf of paper out of her briefcase. It seems, for now at least, that he's been demoted to the bedroom again. He wonders vaguely if it's supposed to be a reprimand or a help. "Oh, by the way," says Hal, and she glances up. "Could I have a laptop? A working one, I mean," he adds, eyes tracking to the black case leaning against the wall near the window containing the fried computer. "You can't expect me to just lie here all day; I'll go stir crazy. I almost did before." If he plays this card anymore it's going to wear out. But it seems to do the trick again. Naomi shrugs, long nails scratching lightly against the paper.

"I don't see why not. I'll ask Jack if there's a spare one you could use." She digs a phone out of her pocket and taps out a quick sequence.

--

The computer is, for their line of work, an older model. It's also been hastily wiped of data and programs. Hal smiles as he scans through the internal records; trying to hide things is always more suspicious than leaving them out in the open. He resurrects a few records just for the fun of it, scanning through uninteresting reports on recent changes to security on the border between Russia and Georgia. Then, satisfied with the computer's performance, he begins.

It's not the first time he's hacked Jack's networks, although the first time was done with the soldier's knowledge as a security test checking for weak points. Those, he is gratified to see, have all been mended, but for hackers of his level there are always cracks to exploit. It takes him two hours to find one and force it open big enough to begin funnelling out data. He knows what he's looking for, which makes it easier.

Hal caught the ID of Mei Ling's computer during his brief tour of the lab, and it isn't difficult to pull up the server activity logs for that terminal. The fact that it's currently logged in is a bonus he was hesitant to count on. Piggy-backing the connection into the computer would be simple. Doing it without giving a hint to the user of what's happening is harder. It takes him a while to scrape up a program in which to hide himself, and a while longer to stream it into the computer. Once he has, though, he's got backdoor access to all the files.

It takes the engineer fifteen minutes of trolling through hard drive, external drives and network folders to strip all the useful data out of the computer and copy it onto his own. He takes care to cover his tracks, tiptoeing out and closing the door silently behind him before cutting his ties to the network itself.

With the files now on his computer, reading them is only a matter of breaking the encryption, which is simple with the programs he downloads from his own internet caches. He's into the reports within fifteen minutes of sweeping them onto his hard drive. The first ten are unrelated. The next two he files away under only broadly pertinent. He skims over the next not expecting much from a report on some building's electrical and Ethernet readings. And then, he reads it over more carefully, fingers stilling over the keyboard. Because it's not some building. It's the building, and the figures are for the night of the fire. Someone, almost certainly Mei Ling, has ferreted out the building's electrical and internet usage stats.

The figures themselves aren't detailed enough to give any answers. But the file's existence tells him enough. It tells him how they think the fire was set. He hadn't even considered it, but now that the thought is planted it's springing up quick and strong. It would be easy, hack into the building's supercomputers and set off an overload, several overloads. Spark a fire in a room with flammable material, without ever being in the building. Backhack one of the processors. The memory slices into his brain like a knife – seeing the towering bulk of circuitry burst into flames. He remembers now, remembers the high pitched whine of the overload. Remembers Snake's shocked face lit by the flickering orange light.

Hal stares at the screen, and then blinks as he doubles back over his lines of thought. Because, no, it wouldn't be easy. Not for most people. Not for very nearly everyone. He reviews the list frantically. He's seen Meryl with a computer before; she's nearly as bad as Snake, to whom a mouse is more useful as a garrotte than anything else. If – and it is still an if – if this is true, than Meryl is innocent. So is Jack, who can use a computer decently for everyday work but never hack one. Naomi is an outside possibility, as is Rose who can manipulate data like clay but has as far as he knows limited skills with creating programs. Of all of them, after him the next most proficient with computers is by far and away Mei Ling.

Mei Ling. Dammit. God fucking _dammit_. How can it be her? How can it _possibly_ be her?

"Hal?"

Hours ago he was watching her, convinced he could believe it if he had to, if there was proof. So sure of his own position, of his unquestioned beliefs. Stupid. More than stupid, not even on the same _plane_ as stupid. Completely demented, unbelievably naïve. A child preaching to his elders, haughty and cock-sure; Elric lecturing Mustang on warfare.

_Mei Ling_. One of their few real friends, even out of the group currently gathered here. Snake's data analyst and gatherer before Otacon, guiding him through the dusty corridors and cement warehouses of Shadow Moses. She remained close even afterwards, one of the very few people Snake cares for, a number he can count on one hand. The soldier has always looked out for her, even in his most antisocial periods when he was hardly looking out for himself. She's always chosen to follow her own path, but Philanthropy would have taken her in in a heartbeat if she had wanted it, would have been happy to have her. And, not least, she's the closest thing Hal has anymore to a sister.

"Hal?"

His world is shaking, foundations he based so much on suddenly revealed to be ice rather than the stone he believed, and they're melting. It can't be her. It can't be, because he loves her like family and Snake cares for her and there's just _no way_ that that kind of trust could be so wrong. And then he closes his eyes and swallows hard against the wave of burning bile, rising with the memory of misplaced trust, and love. Of the times when that trust was wrong. God, there's no way he's made that mistake again. There is _no way_ he's let blind affection cause another tragedy. It cannot be.

"_Hal_!"

Hal's eyes snap open and he leans away from Naomi's outstretched hand, dark nails like blood in the weak sunlight. She lets it fall away, thin brows narrowed in concern. "Are you alright?"

"Uh, yeah, fine. Where's Mei Ling?" The words all pour out together, tumbling over one another.

"Mei Ling? Why?" Naomi looks puzzled and, less obviously, concerned.

"I need to talk… to her…" And then his mind catches up with his mouth. Because the last thing he wants right now is to talk to her. The absolute last, to face her and know – wonder, wonder – what she might have done. He's hurtling too steeply down this cliff, losing his objectivity, losing his ability to see clearly, racing towards that dark room and the agonies it contains. His mind is pulling furiously, inescapably, _horribly_ towards the heart-wrenching conclusion. _Asoubou, Ed-niichan?_

It can't be her. It can't be. But, he knows there won't be any evidence . Whoever did this, and he clings to that pronoun while cold water closes in over him, was good. Good enough to know how to cover her – or his – footsteps. Probably smart enough to get rid of the computer afterwards as well, just in case Hal survived the fire. Mei Ling knows – everyone knows – he's a genius with computers, can resurrect lost data. Can bring things back to life to haunt people. He's always been good at creating his own ghosts. There won't be any physical evidence. There's only her, only confession, and he doesn't want to have that conversation. Doesn't want it more than very nearly anything else. Doesn't want to follow this road at all, if this is where it's going to lead.

What he really needs now is to talk to Snake, but there's no trace of him in the room, he's off busy being wherever he is when he's not here, and Hal has no way to contact him. Which leaves Hal alone to clear this up. He shouldn't be complaining, should be able to bear it, but he never expected, never really believed this could be the truth. Of all possible solutions to the riddle, this is the worst one. The one that makes you want to jump off a cliff yourself rather than wait for someone to push you. That thought catches his attention in a tight fist and he flinches away from the idea that prints itself across his mind, white serif typeface on black, _this is the kind of situation that creates monsters_ with a confused image of a man in a bloody butcher's apron and a pyramid on his shoulders. The kind of situation that destroys souls. Living through it once was shattering. Living through it twice is … unimaginable.

And Snake's still not here. In their vase, the flowers, some kind of long-stemmed lilies, sway in the soft breeze from the window. The sky's clouded over.

"Well, I can call her," says Naomi slowly, breaking into his thoughts again.

He takes too long in responding, thoughts pulled too strongly in opposite directions, and she's tapping in numbers again before he can stop her. Even from the bed, though, he can hear the call fail to connect, hears Mei Ling's voice mail pick up immediately. Her phone's off. "Ah, yes, she did say. She's in the lab this afternoon; no cell phones."

Hal shrugs, shoulder spasming unexpectedly, and his features twist into a light grimace. "It's okay. Nothing urgent."

"It's quite close; if you wanted we could stop by."

"No, it's okay. If you'd just … let her know, next time you see her…"

But he's caught Naomi's attention now, a hawk sensing a change in the weather. She's always been good at reading people. She must know something's wrong, something's happening. The wind is changing.

"Really, Hal, you could stand to be a little more decisive. I suppose, if you promise to stay here, I could run up and get her." She says it as if doing him a favour. Oh, how she likes to watch social experiments. All experiments, really, with the promise of interest. And, he thinks uncharitably, bloodshed.

What Hal hears in her request isn't the approaching of a dreaded conversation, though. It's the promise of freedom. So he agrees. She leaves on clacking heels, door clicking shut behind her. He's out of bed in an instant, padding over to the open window on white cotton socks.

It's raining outside now, and for the first time the engineer notices that he's four storeys up. The ground below is damp grass, dark in the shadow of an immense oak. He leans out to feel the cool air fresh on his skin, the soft touch of the rain in his hair. It's almost more of a mist, the early November afternoon already beginning to shift into dusk. Farther away on the property he can see a row of tall poplars stretching up towards the cloudy sky, small spade-shaped leaves changing from a rather olive-green to bright buttercup yellow. He can smell them from here in the breeze, a slightly bitter, barky scent.

Hal doesn't remember what kinds of trees were outside the building. He never noticed them. His only recollection is of black shadows, tall and twisted in fire-light like fingers reaching for the sky. In his memory they are impossibly crooked and tangled, all darkness and jagged lines. But he was closer to the ground then, a story lower, and his eyes were tearing with the smoke. And then he was on the ground, staring up at them.

Naomi will be coming back soon, with Mei Ling. He thinks he hears the clicking of her heels, but it's gone before he turns his head. He leans out further, taking in a deep breath of cold air, hands braced on the wet frame. Newly painted, white wood shining under the beading rain. It's smooth and slick under his palms. He leans out further, ankles straining, frame digging into his hips, wondering how Snake's been getting in. There's no sign, none at all, wall under the window pristine.

He's suddenly cold, damp wrapping around him like a blanket, gash on his back hot under its touch. There's very little time left, and he is alone, and he has no plan. No idea. No thoughts. Just gut-twisting accusations, unsupportable suspicions tasting of bile. Thoughts so much darker than the ones he had prepared for. The horrible darkness of a black hole, sucking in light, time, hope. He shudders, teeth clicking together.

His glasses slip with the motion, sliding down the bridge of his nose. He tilts his head absently, raising a slow hand to nudge the frames up higher without thought. Behind the already wet lenses, his eyes widen as his thoughts drain away. His one supporting hand slips forward off the frame and out into thin air, weight following behind it.

It's probably thanks to years of Snake's forced self-defence training that he catches the ledge with his other hand. Short nails dig into the hard wood, scratching scalloped trails over its slick surface as he struggles to dig his fingers in deeper with the initial bought of panicked grasping. Then his weight truly hits and the pain as fire rips across the scorched muscles of his back pulls his breath from him in a wet gasp. He hardly registers the cool touch of his glasses against his cheekbones as they slip off and plummet to the ground some forty feet below.

There's no room for thought as he scrambles instinctively to find purchase, the cotton of his socks scratching over the brick of the building's walls without catching, balls of his feet soaked through in seconds from contact with the damp façade. Each twist sends the fire burning inwards though, white-hot embers charring through flesh and muscle into his bones; reaching up with his other arm is more than he can manage, is plunging his hand into glass-melting ashes. Hal's keening even as he struggles, thin high noises against the blanketing sound of rainfall.

His fingers are cramping, shaking as they struggle to keep their grip, fingertips wedged into the window's thin rails. His sock catches on an uneven corner and is pulled off his foot, bare skin scraping over the wet bricks to no better effect. In the initial swing after the fall they knocked against hard glass with a dull thump, but he can't find it again, and it would offer no purchase even if he could. Hal kicks away too hard and jolts his shoulder, smouldering ashes flaring up with new life. Liquid flame washes across his back and he screams through clenched teeth, eyes screwed tightly shut.

He's hanging limply now, a leaf twisting gently in the wind, anchored only by its single stem. He'll fall soon, he knows with jagged fear; his fingers are already numb, muscles spasming, back a sea of fire. He holds on with the desperate need of all living creatures to go on living, but that's a candle he can't burn indefinitely and it's running out of fuel fast.

Hal registers the shocked scream more than the hands on his wrist, hears his name cutting through the thick rainfall like a blade. Looking up is awkward, but through the fog of his pain and the thrumming of his heartbeat in his head he can see the pale face staring down at him, framed by a dark halo. The sleek blue-blackness of a raven's feathers; Mei Ling. The tips of her carefully manicured nails are digging into his skin, both hands wrapped tight around his wrist.

Maybe it's the pain, or the shock, or the stress, but even as he stares up at her Hal feels like he's falling away; moving away from the writhing mess of sensations and emotions bottled up under his skin to a colder, quieter place. Watching the scene from the outside as an impartial observer. He watches his fingers slip, tearing over the metal siding all at once. Watches Mei Ling slam into the window frame, arms extended downwards, eyes tight and teeth clenched as she struggles to keep her grip. Watches Jack come bursting in from nowhere to push her aside like a whirlwind and grab his arm, and then the shoulder of his shirt, hauling him up apparently without effort. This is the point at which he should start paying attention again, he thinks as his knees scrape over the frame. But somehow, he can't seem to focus.

--

Hal doesn't dream. But out of the smoky darkness, quite nearby, he hears a voice.

"Trying to erase yourself?"

He wakes.

--

He's sitting on the ground, head between his knees, something cold on his back. He groans and tries to look up, but a hand on the back of his neck puts gentle pressure on him and he freezes immediately. He doesn't have Snake's snarling protectiveness of his neck, but he's picked up enough of the general idea from the soldier that the presence of an unknown touch there pumps ice through his veins. He's not relieved when Naomi's voice says calmly, "Don't move, Hal."

Staring almost straight down at the floor as he is, it's difficult to know what's going on. He can't see Naomi, but there's someone standing ahead to his right, and another to his left. One wearing a skirt and dark shoes, the other dark slacks. His memory isn't all there and piecing together the immediate past is difficult; a search engine struggling to pick its way through a corrupt drive. It's the pain he remembers first, then the reason behind it, then _Mei Ling_. He looks up, too fast for Naomi to stop.

Mei Ling is standing there, staring down at him. Her face is slightly out of focus, but he can tell that she's torn somewhere between fear and relief. He lets out all his breath at once, and all the fear and uncertainty and tension pours out with it.

"We really should get you down to the infirmary," says Naomi behind him, ice cold hands resting like autumn frost on the slope between his neck and shoulders.

"Where's Snake?" he asks thoughtlessly, acting on long-ingrained instinct and the knowledge that the soldier must be nearby. Must be, because something's happened to him, and it never takes long for Snake to storm in afterwards. It takes the uneasy looks which appear simultaneously on Mei Ling and Raiden's faces to remind him that _Snake is dead_. "Fuck," he says harshly, because he's getting so very tired of all this. Then, aware he can't stand to lose anymore face right now, spits out, "Never mind."

He needs time to piece things together, but his shoulder's still smouldering, and it's making his head ache. Not that he's not used to dealing with headaches. The one thing he knows, absorbed from Snake's example rather than his words, is that he shouldn't be putting himself out in the open right now.

"I'd rather stay here," Hal says. Besides, Snake knows he's here – if he moved across the building it would take the soldier time to find him and that would make him even more pissy than he's going to be already, and he's probably spitting mad. Hal knows from experience that very little makes the soldier as furious as mislaying the engineer.

His request produces general unease, although he's not sure why. Something's leaping up and down at the back of his mind, begging for his attention and he notices, or rather realises, that apart from Naomi's hands his back is warm. Sitting as he is with his back to the window it should be cool if not cold. But it's not, because the window is closed. He turns his head awkwardly to look at it from under his dark bangs. Without his glasses, he can't see the rain peeling down the glass, but he's fairly sure it's there.

"Why's the window closed?" he asks. Knowing the answer before it comes. Or rather, before it doesn't, his words being followed by an awkward strained silence. _Ahah_, he thinks. And then, _damn_, because suicidal tendencies are even more troublesome than temporary insanity.

"I didn't jump," he says. Mei Ling's hands flit about like swallows.

"Of course," she begins, then stutters into silence as Jack overtakes her, all knives and glass.

"You just fell, did you?" he spits out, cat-like.

"No. I was pushed." He pauses, and then decides to hell with it. "By the same person who set the fire for Snake and me. By the same person you've all been trying to track down."

A biting frost sets in, but Hal can sense the intense rage boiling beneath the surface. Jack again, and he wonders what's driving the soldier so fiercely. The man's about to lash out with anger as bare as old bones, but Hal gets there first. It's not Jack he addresses, though, but Mei Ling. The analyst is staring at him with uncertainty filling her dark eyes.

"God, I'm so glad it's not you," he says. The words slip out like a sliver from an infected wound, swollen and pulsing, and the tension flows out like pus, leaving him feeling clearer-headed than he has for days. Mei Ling's expression shifts to cautious bemusement.

"Hal?" says Jack, curtly.

He turns to the soldier, relief a thousand times stronger than insecurity. "It's not you either, Jack, or her." He tilts his head to indicate Naomi behind his back. Her hands are balled into fists, the knuckles pricking at his back like a line of tiny hills. "Mei Ling and Naomi alibi each other out. You don't have the skills. Neither does Meryl." At this point the high that came with clearing Mei Ling abruptly falls out from under him, leaving him plummeting in cold air. Because that only leaves one person. But…

"You're crazy," hisses Jack, who can see what's coming as well as him.

"Where was she? Jack, where was she, just now? If we can alibi her –" then what? They'll be right back at the starting line. But he _was pushed_. He knows it. Can still feel the firm hands against his back, the pressure, the weight. They _were_ there. "Jack, you have to –" He's interrupted by a noise at the door, the twisting of the doorknob. It's pushed open by Meryl, a lithe figure in green with fiery hair, and followed by a less distinct figure who must be Rose.

"What the hell's going on up here?" Meryl, fierce and irritated. The door closes with a click.

"Rose, where were you ten – fifteen minutes ago?" He looks at Mei Ling for the time, but she's looking at Raiden.

"You've cracked, Hal," says Jack firmly, interposing. He's grown out of his old habits, out of covering ignorance and fear with rage. In its place he's developed a cold emotionlessness, more convincing, and more dangerous. Something Hal's never been good at, something that blisters even Snake when he's forced to fall back on it. "You need rest, need help. No one's out to get you. No one was in here before us. After Snake –"

"This isn't about Snake, it's about you, dammit" Hal almost shouts it, words burning in his throat. But the silence that follows his words is too empty, too vast, and he's been carrying secrets too long to be able to shout them out in it. Instead he hisses low and deadly, "It's about the traitor you're harboring in these walls who's trying to _kill you_. To kill us all one by one, starting with Philanthropy. You all know it, you've been having goddamn inquisitions about it, all locked up together in a room sweating each other for the truth. You want to know the truth? The truth is," he ignores Jack's growled "Dammit, Hal."

"The truth is, someone hacked into the computers and blew them, physically blew them. Someone who knew the layout of the building, the placement of all the equipment in relation to flammable material, someone who knew where we would be. Someone who knew exactly what the mission was, and who had the skills to hack those computers. I could do it. Mei Ling might be able to. Naomi _might_ be able to. And Rose, you might be able to. Ten minutes ago, someone tried to push me out this window. Unless there're two people running around this base trying to kill me, it's almost certainly our fire-starter. Naomi and Mei Ling have an alibi. What about you?"

"Enough," snarls Jack, and reaches out to grab his good shoulder. Strong fingers dig into the flesh, burrowing in beneath the collarbone hard enough to bruise, and shake him. "Enough, Hal."

Hal's not strong enough to break the grip, and he doesn't try. Of all of them, only Raiden's had this choice forced on him. Which is more important, your mentor or your wife? Hal doesn't have to wonder; the soldier's choice is clear in his sky-blue eyes. It should sting, but it doesn't. He respects it, is impressed by it. But then, he's not known many families who stood by each other.

"Jack," says a quiet voice from somewhere over the soldier's shoulder. "I can defend myself."

There's a subtle loosening in the locked fingers, and then they disappear all together, Jack stepping back abruptly.

Behind him, the wind rattles the window pane and he turns to look, wonders if it's Snake. Wonders if there's any way in hell he can convince them to open it again. Wonders, fear curling in his belly like a serpent, how much gravity and lost balance can feel like a hand against the back. He bits his cheek and tries to listen to Rose telling them she was alone in an office, because he _cannot start thinking like that_. Too many wrong steps and it really will be Zero System time. He forces himself to concentrate, his mind to see what's there and only what's there and to worry about just that for the first time in days.

And realises with a twinge like an electric shock, that he should have continued on the other way, because it's what's _not_ there that's important.

He turns to Mei Ling and Naomi in the middle of Rose's interrogation by Meryl and asks, "Did you see anyone else in the hall when you were on your way here?"

Hal only just waits for their negative replies before asking, Meryl trailing off in the middle of a question to listen, "Then did either of you move the black case that was by the window there?"

Beside him, on Naomi's far side, fingertips brush against his shoulder. Even out of the corner of his eye, he can see that there's no one there. Naomi and Mei Ling echo their previous assertions. Smiling grimly, he turns his head just slightly in that direction. "Then I know who it is."

Hal loves drama on screen, sits on the edge of his seat for the reveal "The murderer is you!" and the resolution of the black silhouette into the criminal amid general shock. But he's had too much drama in his own life to care for it in reality, to feel anything except pain and fear when it begins seeping in. Now, though, with the knowledge that resolution is just around the corner, that this whole goddamn horror will be cleaned up soon, he feels nothing but relief.

"Hal," growls Jack, supremely unamused.

"What? You don't see it? It makes perfect sense, all of it. Except for his sloppiness. He must have nearly had a heart-attack when you told him you gave me his computer to fix."

There's a momentary pause as everyone else catches up to his train of thought. And then, from Mei Ling, quietly, "Mark?"

"You think it's Mark?" Rose, incredulous.

"Who the hell's Mark?" Meryl, teetering between confusion and anger.

"Call him," says Hal, looking straight at Jack. "Call him here. He took the computer when he pushed me out the window; two birds in one stone."

"But who is he?" hisses Meryl to Mei Ling in the back ground, Mei Ling whispering an answer he pays no attention to.

"I have no idea what his motive could be, who paid him, who turned him, but it fits, Jack. You know it does. Call him."

Without taking his eyes from Hal, the soldier pulls a phone from his pocket, thumbs through the address book, and dials.

"It's me. Come up to 425. You don't need anything."

There's a long silence, a dead space, each of them evaluating possibilities.

"If it is him," begins Meryl, voicing a thought he doubts any of them have had time for yet with the uncertainty still hanging so thick around them. She trails off, equally unsure.

He can feel the conclusion reeling down on them fast and furious as a rain of spears, unavoidable even if he wanted to. They've stepped on the trap door and all that's left is to let gravity take hold.

There's a knock at the door, quiet and even. The room is silent, silence seeping like cement into his ears, nose, lungs. Maybe that's Naomi's drugs, maybe it's the adrenaline crash, but when the door opens he can almost feel the barrier between them and the man standing silhouetted against the white corridor. The manifestation of all the doubt, the rage and the pain, the fear. This is how scapegoats are birthed, except it's not because he knows he's right. _Must_ be right.

"Yes sir?" says Mark.

Hal's impression is of a blank piece of paper, of that complete featurelessness which is one end of the spectrum which techies span, the other being an Ed-like surfeit of oddities. Without his glasses all he sees is a tanned man of medium height and weight, dark hair and a computer-slave's hunch. The voice has a light accent, but he can't place it in two words. It also has the dull tonelessness he recognises from his days at Shadow Moses reporting on delicate intricacies to men who couldn't undo the insert function.

"Your laptop's been misplaced," says Jack lightly. "Seen it around lately?"

"No sir." British, Hal thinks, with a touch of something else.

"Been up here in the last half hour?"

"No sir."

"The monitors'll confirm that?"

"I suppose so, sir…" a hint of confusion edging into an otherwise flat voice.

_They will now_, thinks Hal; half an hour is easily enough time to edit a man out of a usually empty hall.

"How did you spill water on your laptop? There's no liquid allowed in the lab," slips in Hal quickly, doesn't see any movement in the man, any acknowledgement, and that suggests hidden depths. Depths hiding God knows what kinds of monsters.

There's a pause, presumably while Mark evaluates whether he has to answer questions from a man sprawled on the ground with a towel on his back. Then, without apparent concern, "I took it up to my room to finish some work – the lab's locked at night."

"Is that allowed?" He looks to Jack.

"Not technically, but it's been known to happen among the senior staff." His tone indicates that this is not a category that includes Mark.

"Sorry sir. It was a rather rushed job."

"I bet," says Hal slowly, feels the room pivoting around him without movement so vividly he closes his eyes to fight off dizziness. "You couldn't hack the building on the local servers, and you couldn't disconnect the laptop from them and leave it in the lab without raising major questions. Even if you had your back door already waiting it must have been cutting things close."

"Sir?" says the man, without much uncertainty.

"We know it's you." Hal opens his eyes.

There's a pause, all of them trapped in it, flies in amber, waiting like fortune-tellers to see which way the bones will fall.

He doesn't see it coming.

Jack and Meryl do, but one's trapped behind the bed, the other behind Rose, and the automatic's already out and strafing through the wall to their left by the time they get moving.

And then it's on the floor, and Mark's whimpering in pain with his arm twisted unnaturally behind him.

"Took you long enough," says Hal, though a bright sea of relief.

There's a crackling flash, and Snake appears.


	3. Epilogue: Close your eyes, I'm back

_Close your eyes, I'm right beside you  
Close your eyes, I'm back again_

"I can't believe you decided the best way to deal with an assassin was to fake your death and throw your partner to him." Mei Ling, somewhere between incredulous and appalled.

"I can't believe you didn't fake _Hal's_ death and throw yourself to him." Meryl, tapping a short-nailed finger against a cup of coffee, apparently disinterested.

"I just can't believe you managed to wear stealth-calibrated projectors in your glasses without blinding yourself." Naomi, turning the broken glasses over in her hands. The glasses it took him three weeks to build, cameras built into the frame calibrated to register the frequency of the stealth camo, tiny projectors mounted on the interior of the frames displaying it on the specially treated lenses. A hell of a lot of trouble to go to, but he'd hoped it would have application in other situations. And once he'd had the idea… not tinkering had always been harder than tinkering.

"Well, it's not like he's not halfway there already," Snake, cigarette between his lips, his first in three days. He lets the smoke out in a long, thin stream, dragon-like.

They're sitting around Hal's bed – a temporary set-up in the infirmary – Hal with a new batch of ointment smeared under a clean bandage on his back, Snake with a few new patches stuck on by Naomi rather than himself.

"The only things that surprise me," says the soldier, "is how long it took you to figure it out –"

"Like you did so much better," cuts in Meryl.

"– and that you're still here," he finishes as if he hadn't been interrupted. It's been a while since they all met up like this, Hal thinks, and then realises with something like surprise that they've all been here for days. Somehow it only seems real now, as if everything before was just a dream. A horrible, artificial dream he could only escape from by closing his eyes.

He's never, he knows, been good with dealing.

Meryl raises an accusatory eyebrow. Snake takes his cigarette in his hand, gestures to Hal with the glowing tip. Hal's vaguely surprised Naomi hasn't already confiscated it; would like to see her try. "We'd've been out of here three hours ago if he'd get his ass of out bed. What's your excuse?"

"You don't think it might be better to stick around until we know who hired the guy?"

"I don't give a damn about the fact that we're on another hit-list – or, more probably, on one we already know about."

"So, what, ignore it until it tries to burn you to a cinder?"

"I seem to recall being the only one who _didn't_ ignore it. No one else around here listened when we told you someone was after our asses."

"I'll make a note to drop everything next time you send me a paranoid email."

"Geez you two, if I didn't already have a headache I'd sure as hell have one after listening to you try to have a conversation." Hal wonders sometimes whether they were like this after Shadow Moses, whether the brief candle of their relationship survived because they hadn't gotten tired of the endless bickering, or whether there had ever been a difference. Been something more. He suspects from the anger he's felt in Meryl for the past three days that there was, but whatever it was it burned out long ago. Now there's just the shadow, the faint enjoyment they take out of sparring in short increments before they tire of it. It's a cage they can't escape anymore.

"Yeah, well, if you'd've gotten out of bed…" grouses Snake, without much heat charring the words.

"And if I get out now?"

"Then we can get the hell out of here. The kid'll let us know what he turns up."

The door opens halfway through Snake's comment, all of them turning to see who it is.

"The kid can tell you now," says Jack dryly, entering with a folder under his arm. Snake leans back against the bed, crossing his arms and settling in. The rest of them shift into more formal poses, changing gears from chatting to strategizing. "It's not everything, mind you. That'll take time."

And probably, thinks Hal sourly, a lot more pain.

"Turns out Mark Terrice is Mark Pater, former – he claims – Indian Intelligence."

Snake snorts. "When it comes to counter-intelligence, the Indian Bureau couldn't find their ass with both hands. You want me to believe they sunk an assassin in here?"

"According to him, they didn't. They sunk a mole trained in data mining and high-security hacking with orders to report on our movements and targets but not to take any action. He went rogue, he says."

"Well, he's sure as hell got minimal weapons and combat training, But as for the rest of it." Meryl waves a sceptical hand. "Got any proof?"

Jack gives her a flat look. "It'll take more than a few hours to verify a deep-burrowing mole, if we can at all. And he's insisting that he cut all links to the Bureau weeks ago. Not that that means anything."

"Anything else?" Snake reaches across to the ashtray on the table beside Hal's bed, currently empty, and stubs the end of his cig out in it. He's careful to smother all the smoke before replacing it, the closest he'll come to not smoking when he needs the nicotine. It's not a compromise Hal is too happy with, but he doubts the soldier would make it for anyone else, and can only hope his influence there counts for something.

"Assuming at least some of the story is true, we're starting a thorough combing through everything we can pull up on India and the rest of the peninsula, just to be safe. If you all could look through your files…"

"Of course," says Mei Ling. Meryl shrugs and nods. Jack's eyes glance to him, uncertain, and Hal nods as well, Snake turning to catch it.

"We'll keep digging, obviously. If anything new comes up, I'll let you know. "

"Watch your backs," says Snake gruffly, not directing the comment to anyone specifically as far as Hal can tell from the straight line of his spine. "If one's slipped in, who knows how many else have, or are looking to."

Philanthropy, at least, is safe from moles. Probably their isolation was the reason they were the first to spot what looked like attempts at picking them and their allies off. But it's easy to distrust unknown factors when you don't have to work with them.

Jack nods, eyes on Snake. "Watch your own. I'm damned if I'm going to host another mutually suspecting court of inquiry."

"Fair enough," says Snake, and Hal can hear the smirk in his voice.

"I'll see you around, then. I've got to get back. Take care." Jack divides his words among all of them, although if it's Snake he looks to last and longest it's not surprising. Then he's gone with a click of the door, and the meeting's breaking up, everyone with places to be which are – most important of all – not here.

Hal says his goodbyes, and lets Snake usher him out under dark eyes. Can't say he's sad to be going. Can't say he feels anything other than a kind of light, insubstantial relief to be out in the fresh, open air.

"You know," he says as they head for the car Jack's lending them, highly conscious of the rustle of Snake's jeans next to him, of the sharp scent of the cigarette that he can't quite bear to nag the soldier for just yet, "for a while there… the kind of time that only really exists in your thoughts, you know, that isn't really real…" he kicks through a tumble of wet leaves lying on the damp pavement.

"Sometimes you miss things that are right in front of your face, written in neon letters a foot high," says Snake gruffly. "But you've never seen anything that's not there. Not even when it would have made things a damn sight easier. Don't worry about it." It's an order, not a comfort.

"It's not fun," he says quietly, relief burning away fast as mist in bright sunlight, "wondering if you're cracking up. Knowing everyone else thinks so."

There's a long, shuffling silence. And then, "No," agrees the soldier. There's no need for more words, they know each other more than well enough to read everything that is being conveyed from that one word.

_Christ, I don't want to lose you_, he thinks, cold and clammy. Gut-twistingly afraid all of the sudden, fallen into a hole he never saw. "I wish we'd never done this. I wish… I wish I didn't know …" _what it'll be like when you're gone_. He pushes the cheap pharmacy glasses up the bridge of his nose violently, eyes narrowed and glaring harshly at the ground.

Snake steps into the lee of a leafless poplar, grabs the engineer's arm and yanks him along harshly enough that Hal loses his balance and nearly ends up on the muddy lawn. Snake drops heavy hands on his shoulders, taking slight care with the injured one but not so much that it doesn't flare under the weight.

"There's no point in worrying about the future; it'll just make you miserable. We have what we have now; focus on that."

"Just close your eyes and pretend," says the engineer quietly, bitterly.

Snake draws him in close, holds him tight in steady arms. "No. Open them, and live with what you have. Treasure it for as long as you can." He's whispering, thick and gruff. Leans in closer to rest his temple against Hal's.

"What if it's not enough?"

"It'll have to be. We'll make it be." He bends to press a warm kiss against Hal's neck, against the heartbeat running so shallow under the surface. It's not passion, not tenderness. It's strength and reassurance, and promise.

Hal sighs, wishes he felt less empty than he does. "Let's go home."

--

For the first time in four days, Hal Emmerich dreams in black and white.

Dreams of white corridors and tiled floors and unfurnished rooms, each with its own Snake. Every single one watches him open the door with dull, empty eyes.

He wakes up with tears in his own eyes, and rolls closer to Snake's warmth. Sighs, and goes back to sleep.


End file.
